The Seahawks announced Monday that they had placed safety Nick Emmanwori on the active/physically unable to perform list. His injury was unknown until Wednesday.
Brady Henderson of ESPN reports that Emmanwori underwent right ankle surgery earlier this month and could miss some time in training camp. Emmanwori, though, is expected to be ready for Week 1.
Emmanwori had participated in the offseason work with teammates but continued to experience soreness, leading to the arthroscopic procedure.
The 2025 second-round pick had two injuries to his right ankle last season. He had a high-ankle sprain in the season opener that forced him to miss three games and then a low-ankle sprain before Super Bowl LX , which he played through.
Emmanwori tallied 81 total tackles with nine tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks, 11 passes defensed and an interception in 14 regular-season games in 2025. He added 13 total tackles with four passes defensed and a fumble recovery in Seattle’s three postseason games.
The Seahawks can activate Emmanwori back to the 90-player roster as soon as he passes a physical.
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Seahawks running back Zach Charbonnet tore his ACL in the divisional round of the playoffs and the team confirmed that he’s not ready to resume practicing on Wednesday.
Charbonnet has been placed on the physically unable to perform list ahead of the start of training camp. Charbonnet can be activated from the list at any point in camp, but the timing of the injury means that it will likely be some time before the team will be moving him to the active roster.
The Seahawks previously placed safety Nick Emmanwori, running back Kenny McIntosh, cornerback Tyrone Broden, and defensive tackle Deven Eastern on the PUP list.
Charbonnet ran 184 times for 730 yards and 12 touchdowns last season. First-round pick Jadarian Price, George Holani, Emanuel Wilson, Velus Jones, and Jacardia Wright are the healthy options at running back in Seattle.
The Seahawks made a change to their 90-player roster on the eve of training camp.
Seattle signed cornerback Brandon Johnson and cut tight end Harrison Bryant on Tuesday.
Johnson signed with the Eagles as an undrafted rookie out of Oregon last year and played in three games as a rookie, spending most of the season on the Eagles’ practice squad. The Eagles waived Johnson last month.
Bryant signed with the Seahawks in April after spending last season with the Texans. He has previously spent time with the Eagles, Raiders and Browns.
The Seahawks’ rookies are already at camp and their veterans arrive on Friday. Their first training camp practice is Saturday.
Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez wants a long-term deal, and the Patriots want to sign him to a long-term deal. He shares an agent with Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon, though, and Ian Rapoport reports that Witherspoon is “further along” in talks.
The Seahawks have offered a deal that would pay Witherspoon “upwards of $30 million” annually, per Rapoport. That would make Witherspoon among the highest-paid cornerbacks in the league.
Rams cornerback Trent McDuffie is at the top of the market at the position with an annual average of $31 million. Indianapolis’ Sauce Gardner and Houston’s Derek Stingley Jr. are at $30 million annually.
Gonzalez, who is scheduled to make $2.259 million this season, won’t be far behind Witherspoon in getting a new deal.
The 17th overall pick in 2023 made second-team All-Pro in 2024 and the Pro Bowl in 2025. He has totaled 145 tackles, two interceptions, 24 pass breakups and a sack in three seasons.
One of Seattle’s key defensive players is not yet ready to practice at training camp.
The Seahawks announced on Monday that safety Nick Emmanwori has been placed on the physically unable to perform list.
It’s currently unclear what landed Emmanwori on the PUP list, as he was a participant during the club’s offseason program. But at this time of year, Emmanwori can come off the list to practice at any time.
One of the league’s best defensive rookies last year, Emmanwori tallied 81 total tackles with nine tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks, 11 passes defensed, and an interception in 14 regular-season games in 2025. He added 13 total tackles with four passes defensed and a fumble recovery in Seattle’s three postseason games, helping the club win Super Bowl LX.
Additionally, the Seahawks placed running back Kenny McIntosh and cornerback Tyrone Broden on the PUP list, with both players continuing to recover from injuries suffered during the 2025 season.
Rookie defensive tackle Deeven Eastern was previously placed on the PUP list late last week.
With the World Cup over, it’s time to remove the grass and reinstall the artificial surface at the various NFL stadiums that play American football on the fake stuff. The NFL Players Association used the World Cup finale to launch a P.R. campaign for grass in all stadiums.
As explained over the weekend, it won’t work. But there’s perhaps a better way to use public pressure to force change.
Do it one team at a time.
The best place to start is Seattle. Vinod Khosla will be buying the team, if the transaction is approved by enough of the other owners next month. And Khosla will be getting his feet wet on a big stage, along with his wife, Neeru, who will be the controlling owner.
Instead of taking general aim at the league at large for grass over turf, the union should focus on Seattle. Take out the turf, put in the grass. Like they did for the World Cup.
If the players are serious about pushing the issue, push it hard. Push until the Seahawks’ new management opts to switch to grass.
Then, pick another team. Or teams. Changing to grass at SoFi Stadium or MetLife Stadium would cover 20 games per year.
It won’t be easy. Now that it’s a CBA issue, the NFL’s owners will want the teams that have turf to hold the rope. And it would be awkward for Khosla, as the new kid on the block, to defy the unspoken desire to force the players to bargain for grass.
Still, owners either care about their players, or they don’t. They either want to give them the surface they strongly prefer, or they don’t. They either understand that playing on grass entails less overall wear and tear on the human body, or they don’t.
Making it a general assault keeps any one owner from feeling the heat. Focusing it on one owner at a time makes it hard for that owner to hide.
If the NFLPA wants grass, that’s the way to do it. Start publicly pushing Vinod and Neeru Khosla to remove the turf from Lumen Field and install grass.
Seahawks left guard Grey Zabel got to see plenty of the Rams during his rookie season.
The two NFC West clubs faced off three times last season, including a matchup in the NFC Championship Game that the Seahawks won en route to their Super Bowl title. During an appearance on the Green Light with Chris Long podcast, Zabel called that game “a heavyweight boxing match” and said that he came out of the year with both a healthy dislike and a healthy respect for their divisional rival.
“I hate the Rams, but I love the Rams because it is mano a mano, best on best,” Zabel said. “They know us well, we know them well. You’re just sitting there trying to win every single rep. When they’re calling out plays, we can tell what they’re doing based off the defensive scheme, it’s fun football.”
Zabel said Rams defensive tackle Kobie Turner was his “kryptonite” last season and the Rams tried to make things even tougher on the Seahawks by trading for Myles Garrett this offseason. They could also get Aaron Donald back up front if he comes out of retirement to make things even more interesting in the NFC West this season.
It’s been known since March that the Seahawks will be the preseason Hard Knocks team for 2026 — and that the Patriots will finally take their Hard Knocks turn in 2027.
It’s not yet known which teams will take center stage for in-season Hard Knocks.
In 2024, the in-season version expanded its focus from one team to a full division, in part to dilute the competitive impact of the intrusion during a time when the games count. The first year, the series tracked the teams of the AFC North. Last year, it was the NFC East.
This year, there’s been no announcement yet. The 2025 teams were announced in May. In 2024, the NFL disclosed the division in June.
We’ve made multiple attempts over the past week to get an answer as to when the teams will be known. To date, there’s no indication as to when the division will be disclosed — or if there will even be an in-season Hard Knocks in 2026.
There are three potential explanations for the silence. One, they’ve decided not to announce the division in advance. Two, they’ve yet to pick the division. Three, they’ve decided not to do it at all.
The in-season version gets easily lost in the shuffle, especially as the league shuffles around its schedule to maximize standalone windows. With games to watch on Thursdays, Sundays, Mondays, and (this year) multiple Wednesdays and multiple Fridays, would enough people watch a weekly look at four different teams?
If it happens this year, the practical options are down to four divisions. With a team from the NFC West serving as the focal point for Hard Knocks this year and a team from the AFC East doing it next year, those two divisions presumably aren’t in play.
That leaves the AFC South, the AFC West, the NFC North, or the NFC South.
Or maybe the plug has quietly been pulled on the whole thing. If shifting to a full division was aimed at avoiding putting one team at a disadvantage in its own division, the full division ends up at a disadvantage in comparison to the other teams in the conference with which the Hard Knocks teams are competing for wild-card berths and playoff positioning. (Especially if the league is moving toward a new seeding structure that doesn’t guarantee a home game for a division winner, which is expected to happen when the season expands to 18 games.)
Maybe, just like the offseason version of Hard Knocks (which was so revealing and compelling when the Giants did it in 2024 that no one else will do it), Hard Knocks will be reverting to a preseason exercise only.
There’s another possible outcome, in our view. In lieu of rolling out the in-season Hard Knocks episodes during the season, maybe the time to unveil the series will be the upcoming offseason. It doesn’t hurt the Quarterback series that the show arrives months after the prior season ended, when there’s nothing else going on for NFL fans to consume.
Frankly, the best approach would be to capture the raw audio and video as to all teams, and to decide after the season ends which division provides the most interesting subject for the series. Or, if the cameras and microphones will be present for all teams, why not put together an in-season series that looks at the most interesting moments from the full league?
However it goes, it’s an NFL decision and not an ESPN call. NFL Films remained with the NFL after the ESPN merger with NFL Media.
For the NFL, the ultimate business decision could come down to whether it makes business sense to not do in-season Hard Knocks at all — or whether it makes more sense to embrace a more ambitious project that entails getting footage from 32 teams and editing an after-the-fact Hard Knocks that could have much more appeal than focusing on one division, while also eliminating any concerns about competitive disadvantage.
Last Saturday, the Paul G. Allen Estate announced that the Seahawks will be sold (pending approval) to a group led by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.
The bidding between the two finalists was extremely close.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the process eventually consisted of Khosla’s group and the group led by Celtics limited partner Aditya Mittal going back and forth, like an auction. One side would one-up the other, and the other would raise the stakes higher.
The process ended with Khosla’s group bidding $9.612 billion.
There was another factor that helped the bid from Khosla’s group win the competition. The source says that Khosla’s plan to make his wife, Neeru, the controlling owner appealed to Jody Allen, the sister of Paul Allen who has been running the team following his passing in 2018.
We posed the question to a spokesperson for the Paul G. Allen Estate regarding whether the decision to delegate the main ownership role to Neeru Khosla was a factor in the outcome of the process. In response, the spokesperson had “nothing to share beyond the statement we released last week about reaching a sale agreement with the Khosla family.”
Every team must identify a single controlling owner who holds the power to cast any and all votes on league matters. Every year, each controlling owner must identify the person who would replace the controlling owner in the event of death or incapacitation.
It’s an important aspect of NFL ownership. The league wants to know, with specificity, who will have the power to cast votes on the various issues that are presented to the full membership at the four quarterly meetings, and at any special meetings.
The Seahawks placed rookie defensive tackle Deven Eastern on the active/physically unable to perform list, the team announced Saturday.
Eastern, 23, missed much of the offseason program with an unspecified injury.
The Seahawks can activate Eastern back to the 90-player roster as soon as he passes his physical.
Seattle made Eastern a seventh-round pick in the 2026 draft. The University of Minnesota product totaled 12 tackles for loss, 4.5 sacks and two forced fumbles in 45 games over four seasons, including five tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and a forced fumble in 13 games last season.
He joins a crowded room that includes Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy II, Jarran Reed, Rylie Mills and Brandon Pili.
